Puzzling over Ineptness

James Fallows devotes a posting to the puzzle over why Obama seems so incompetent at dealing with the crazed Republican attacks. He raises some interesting points. But doesn't hit the nail on the head: Obama sees himself as the great Uniter, but you can't join together with a party Political Ideology Suicide Bombers. They simply blow you up and chuckle at your bobble-headed ineptness.

But Fallows does make some useful points:

The US has a much higher amenable death rate than other industrialized countries. Fundamentally, what Republicans are saying is that Americans' lives are not worth as much as French lives or New Zealanders lives or Canadian lives. We are not entitled to the standard of living they enjoy. Republicans are saying that having the US be last in health care among industrialized nations is fine -- it's all right for us to let people die before their time. Death panels exist now -- entire departments in health insurance companies are devoted to denying Americans care.

Now that is a message that Obama should be using the bully pulpit to pound home. But he doesn't. He is John Kerry re-incarnated with a day-late and dollar-short stumbling about. He is a patsy like Michael Dukakis idiotically planted on a tank looking like a fool trying to "fit in" for a macho warrior political photo shoot. He's an Al Gore looking uncomfortably professorial while his opponent does an aw shucks homeboy imitation to win votes before he knifes and guts the voters with this tax cuts for the rich followed by more tax cuts for the rich.

Face facts, Obama has been swift-boated. The cynical, vicious Republican tricksters have won. They have taken the red state bible-thumpers and turned them into zombie protestors who can't be stopped because reason and truth won't stop a soulless dead person.